Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle

I love Eric Rohmer's movies mainly those in which, like in this one, he shows normal daily life that can have important episodes which can be gracious, humorous, even sometimes having poetry or a bit of mystery, unexpectedness and adventure. He shows his characters thinking and philosophizing about apparently simple things and behaviours and those thoughts often contrast with real life events. We can also see through the dialogues the contrast of the universe of values we may have in mind and the real world outside. In this movie two young girls meet by chance when one of them has got a flat tyre while riding a bicycle in the countryside and the other one offers to help her to solve the problem. From now on they become close friends though they are very different in temperament, mentality and behaviour. The one who lives in the country goes to Paris and the other one who lived there already, shares her apartment with her new friend. Both are university students, the Parisian one in Ethnology and the country one in Fine Arts. After the first adventure of her meeting they live in Paris 3 more episodes of daily life which were adventurous but without going much beyond the natural and ordinary and shown with great simplicity but also with great mastery. Only in my opinion the fourth and last episode is a bit too fanciful but the movie is good in its whole despite that.

Do you like experimental films? Do you like films that are amusing and curious to watch, but, not very particular to have a well made star to end story? Then, this film is for you. It's a story about two girls in 4 sections. Interesting movie, and I liked it.

4 aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) was written and directed by Éric Rohmer. Rohmer had some down time while directing the film Le Rayon vert, and used that time to make this interesting movie.

Joëlle Miquel plays Reinette, who is spending the summer in an isolated cottage near her rural home . Jessica Forde portrays Mirabelle, a Parisian who is vacationing in the area for the summer. The two women become friends. In the Fall, they share an apartment in Paris, where Reinette attends art school, and Mirabelle attends the Sorbonne.

Rohmer has divided the movie into four parts. The first part is when the two women meet. The other three parts are incidents that occur to one or both of them.

As in all of Rohmer's films, dialog is the very important. The women talk and argue throughout the film. Unlike many of Rohmer's films, things happen to them and those things are the basis of their discussions. (Usually, his characters just talk about relationships.)

The events include encounters with a shoplifter, a rude waiter, homeless people, and the owner of an art gallery.

The film is colorful, interesting, and easy to watch. It's not a masterpiece, but it's worth finding and watching. 4 aventures has a solid IMDb rating of 7.5. I thought it was even better then that, and rated it 9.

Reinette's antics are meant to irritate, and Mirabelle is why you keep watching. This dynamic of contrasting characters (the 'neurotic' complimented by 'the cooler friend'), often appears in Rohmer films: there's melodramatic Blanche and likeable Léa in L'Ami de mon amie; childish Magali and demure Isabelle in Conte d'automne; and unbearable Sabine and beautiful Clarisse in Le Beau Mariage.

The grocery store scene in Four Adventures stands out as the highlight of the film to me. Rohmer took us through the most interesting scene in what felt like real-time, and then, in the very next scene, allowed Mirabelle to describe the event to Reinette. Was she going to exaggerate or tell the truth?! I thought that was a brilliant little moment, where we were able to be voyeurs not once, but twice.

Overall, this little gem about an unlikely friendship puts you exactly where you want to be: living in Rohmer's France for 1 hour and 39 minutes. My only complaint is: I wished Rohmer had worked with Jessica Forde (the actress who plays Mirabelle) in more of his films. She was a natural; one of my favorite Rohmerettes.

I read in a short critique of Rohmer recently the perfect sentence to describe his work and how to approach it: "It is when we let Rohmer's irony (the incongruence of his characters) be a seed of self-reflection within ourselves that his films take on a transcendent dimension." The transcendent dimension that all great works of art have is there but you have to let the irony become a seed of self-reflection first, you have to actively participate, hence the reason why many people find Rohmer's films boring. They don't even realize what they're missing and don't want to know! The closer a Rohmer film is to soap opera on the surface and the less offbeat it is the more money it makes (the recent "Autumn's Tale" made a very impressive 2 million dollars on the art-house circuit but I, for one, thought it was just o.k.), but ALL of them have depth if you look for it.

Rohmer's films slowly and quietly build into elaborate structures of subtly hilarious sophistication which get better with each viewing (letting the irony really take root and become a seed of self-reflection). They are all (on the surface at least) very similar: done low-budget but with quietly superb and magnificent cinematography, maximum conversation, minimum hi-jinks or action, relying on subtlety and the viewer's undivided attention and engagement to reveal their deep humor and depth. All of Rohmer's films make fun of human folly and vanity in a way that's entirely unprecedented, true-to-life, and unique in the cinema. Critics have labeled the term 'classicist' on his head but I don't know of any filmmakers or artists, outside of some of the great satirical novelists of the 19th century, who have approached their subject in this way. There is an incredible amount of pure cinema in Rohmer but done in a way that's completely invisible when the viewer's not seeking it out, absolutely devoid of any tendencies to show-off and draw attention to itself.

"Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle" is about two young girls, one a surrealistic-painter from the country, the other-- a law-student from Paris , both very pretty and charming, who strike up a friendship and go through a few neurotic and enlightening incidents together both in the city and the country: trying to wake up at the moment of absolute silence every morning when night-birds stop chirping and morning birds are still asleep; dealing with a rude Paris cafe waiter; dealing with pan-handlers trying to hustle them for change; moral dilemmas about shoplifting; selling Reinette's painting without her having to speak one word to the gallery owner because she's sticking to a vow of silence she made the day before; etc. The Very Funny and valuable results are captured by Rohmer in his trademark, meditative, and un-intrusive style. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED